The Great Escape (11 page)

‘Because I don’t need them,’ he mutters.

‘But you do! If I needed them, I’d just go out and get a pair. What does it matter? No one’s going to see, it’s not as if you’d have to wear them out if that’s what you’re worried about …’

‘I don’t need glasses,’ he retorts, shutting the book.

‘I just mean
reading
glasses. They’re really cheap. Poundland have them for …’

‘A quid. Yeah, I know! You’ve mentioned it before, many times.’

God, have I?
Lou thinks.
Have I turned into the kind of person who goes on about reading glasses in Poundland?

Several sneezes in succession curtail the discussion, and Lou throws him an exasperated glance. Perhaps she should mop his fevered brow and make him a mug of fresh tea to join the extended family of cold, half-finished teas that are dotted around him. But she picked up the Sunday papers on her way home and, rather than read them here, surrounded by snotty tissues and germs, she fancies perusing them as she takes a bubble bath instead.

‘D’you need anything, hon?’ she asks.

Spike shakes his head, clearly still smarting over his eyesight being called into question. ‘No thanks. I’m
fine
.’

As she runs her bath, relieved to get away from him, Lou mulls over Hannah’s email. Lou picked it up before she hurried out to meet Jo, and she has yet to reply. ‘Forgot to tell you,’ she calls out to Spike over the rush of the water, ‘Hannah’s planning a hen weekend.’

‘Uh?’ he croaks from the living room.

‘Hannah wants a weekend away, in Glasgow – just me, her and Sadie. She emailed me about it last night.’

‘Glasgow?’ Spike exclaims, at the bathroom doorway now, looking oddly perky, considering he was on the verge of death a few moments earlier.

‘Yes.’ Lou quickly undresses and sinks into the warm, sudsy water. ‘It would make sense, wouldn’t it, going back there to celebrate? We could relive our misspent youth.’ She laughs hollowly, waiting for Spike to protest that it’s too far away and too expensive, and what would he do by himself all weekend?

‘When’s it happening?’ he asks.

‘Don’t know, but pretty soon I’d imagine. She wants me to call her so we can talk about dates.’ Lou reaches over the bath to grab one of the Sunday supplements from the floor.

‘Dates?’ Spike repeats.

It’s irritating her now, this echoing thing, as if words like ‘Glasgow’ and ‘dates’ are unfamiliar and strange and he needs to practise making the sounds.

‘You know,’ she says slowly, as if speaking to a small child. ‘
Dates.
Not the sticky kind that come in a box. The calendar kind – like when we’d go.’

Spike runs a hand through his hair that’s pressed in different directions from where he’s been lying on it. Dark, bruisy patches lurk under his eyes, and his skin looks starved of daylight. ‘You mean like a
whole
weekend away?’ he says. ‘In Glasgow?’

Lou eyes him steadily over the magazine. ‘Yeah. Me, Hannah and Sadie off the leash for two whole days.’ She widens her eyes, teasing him. ‘God knows what we’d get up to.’

He grins, a faint flush replacing his deathy pallor. ‘So are you going then?’

‘How can I, Spike?’ Lou pokes her toes out of the water and flexes them.

‘Well, why not?’

‘Um … for one thing, there’d be the train fare, the hotel, meals, drinks and …’ Lou shrugs. ‘I can’t afford it. I’m absolutely stony broke.’

‘But … you just went out for brunch.’

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘and it was Jo’s treat. I can’t afford a whole weekend away.’

‘God, that’s a shame.’ Spike’s forehead crinkles in sympathy. ‘I mean, they
are
your best mates, and Hannah will only be getting married once, hopefully.’

Lou inhales the mildewy bathroom air as an image forms in her mind: of Hannah and Sadie perched on bar stools, laughing their heads off like old times. Hannah will be glowing with pre-wedding excitement, and Sadie will be all red lips and curves and tumbling chestnut hair, and men will be falling over themselves to talk to them. Then she sees herself, not in her favourite vintage cocktail dress which she bought when she was a student, and which she loves and still fits her, but in an acrylic brown tabard with Let’s Bounce written across the chest. And she’s not on a bar stool between her two best friends, but on her hands and knees, using her little purple plastic scraper to remove a blob of congealed coronation chicken off the floor.

Spike is at the bathroom cabinet now, taking out a pair of tiny scissors and tilting his head back in front of its mirrored door, all the better to study his nasal hairs. He didn’t have those when she met him. He just had a hairy chest – still does, of course – which Lou had found manly and sexy because, at nineteen, she’d never encountered one in an intimate setting before. Spike was different in other ways too, with his dangerous dark eyes and brief flurry of pop stardom in his youth, which she’d felt certain would burst back into life, if she stood back and waited patiently for long enough.

‘Oooch,’ Spike exclaims, snipping a hair. Lou drapes the magazine over the edge of the bath and observes the process with interest. To his right, three pairs of wrinkly boxer shorts are spread out to dry on the radiator. Nasal clipping complete, he turns and looks at her naked body in the bath. Not lustfully, Lou realises, or even approvingly, even though he still seems to fancy her, at least when they’re in bed. No, the way Spike is observing Lou now suggests that she’s a piece of sculpture he’s not sure if he likes or not. She imagines him turning away from her in the gallery and deciding to go to the café instead.

‘Well,’ he says thoughtfully, ‘maybe we could figure something out so you can go.’

‘I don’t see how,’ Lou replies. ‘The wedding’s coming up, isn’t it? I know we’re staying at Ryan and Hannah’s, but still … I might as well be realistic.’

Spike frowns and scans the bathroom, as if seeking inspiration from the cracked blue tiles or his collection of mangled ointment tubes, which he stores in a plastic plant pot on the windowsill. ‘Couldn’t Hannah or Sadie help you out?’

‘I’m not asking them, Spike. God, I’d never ask my friends for money. It would sound so …
pathetic
.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, you know – thirty-five years old and I can’t scrape together a train fare to Glasgow …’ She snorts.

He looks crestfallen. Lou blinks at him, wondering how he manages to appear so much younger than forty-eight. Probably because he doesn’t have much to worry about, apart from which bodily part to idly scratch next, or whether it’s time to slope to the kitchen for another cup of tea or a beer.

‘Lou-Lou, honey …’ He pauses. ‘You know what I think? You’ve been working too hard at that awful place. And if you go to Glasgow it’ll be a change of scene and a laugh,
and
I could spend the whole weekend working on my CV.’

‘Your CV?’ she splutters. ‘What d’you mean, your CV?’

He frowns, looking hurt. ‘You know. One of those things people send out when they’re applying for jobs.’

‘Yes, I know what a CV is, but …’ She stops herself from saying
what would you put on it?

‘What kind of job would you apply for?’ she asks.

‘Oh, I dunno, I suppose I’ll have to start thinking more … laterally.’

The bath water is lukewarm now, but Lou is too dumbstruck by Spike’s announcement to reach for the hot tap.

‘What about your music?’ she adds. ‘I mean, are you thinking of getting a full-time job or what?’

‘Well,’ he shrugs, ‘I suppose I’ll just see what’s out there and keep music going on the side.’

‘On the side of what?’ she asks, laughing now.

‘I’ve no idea!’ he huffs, all symptoms of his sudden illness vanishing. ‘But you’re right – we need more money. We can’t keep going like this. Since I’ve been ill, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking …’ He reddens slightly.

‘But you’ve only been ill for like, a couple of hours, and anyway,
I’m
not stopping you from doing your CV. It’s not as if I breathe down your neck putting you off. In fact there’s no reason why you can’t do it right now, without me being 200 miles away.’ She clamps her mouth shut. Here he is, talking about taking a positive step, and she’s giving him a lecture.

‘Yeah, I know, babe,’ he murmurs, ‘but it’d just be me, all on my own, and I know I’ve been a bit, um …
relaxed
lately. I feel shit about it, to be honest. And if you went away I’d have nothing to do than focus on applying for jobs.’

‘Okay,’ she says slowly, ‘but I’ve told you, I don’t even have the money to …’

‘Let’s sell something then,’ Spike says firmly.

Lou stares at him. He looks so energised now, with his newly-clipped nostrils and glowing cheeks.

‘What would we sell?’ she asks warily.

‘Couldn’t you knock up a few necklaces?’

‘I don’t
knock up
jewellery,’ she retorts. ‘I know it might not seem much to you, Spike, but it takes me days to make a piece, and I don’t even have any silver or stones at the moment …’ She tails off, prickling with guilt at the sight of his sad, puppy-dog face as he turns and leaves the bathroom. ‘Sorry, I know you’re only trying to help,’ she calls after him.

When he doesn’t reply, Lou climbs out of the bath, looks around for her dressing gown, then remembers that Spike’s stolen it for a pillow and wraps herself in a towel instead. As she joins him on the rug in front of the gas fire, he turns to her and smiles. ‘I’ve had an idea,’ he says, pointing at the guitar propped up against their coffee table. ‘See that? Reckon I know someone who’d buy it.’

‘What?’ She frowns. ‘You’re not selling that! Don’t be crazy.’

‘But you said you wanted …’

‘Of course I want to go, but you’re
not
selling the first guitar you ever owned, and even if you did, I wouldn’t take the money for it.’

‘I just thought Rick at Sound Shack might want …’

‘No, Spike! Can you imagine how bad I’d feel? It’s really sweet of you and I can’t believe you even thought of it, but it’s not happening. So let’s just forget all about it.’ With a smile, she snuggles close to his chest, overwhelmed by his generous suggestion. Yet, as they lie together, sharing Spike’s nest, she becomes aware of something else mingling with the gas fire’s oppressive heat – not sickness or germs but a lighter, fruitier, almost
floral
scent.

No, she’s probably imagining it. It must be her age – she’s such a lightweight these days. Two Bloody Marys and she loses a grip on her senses.

FIFTEEN

Sadie knows she can’t possibly join Hannah and Lou in Glasgow. She’s a mother, and proper mothers don’t jump on a train, abandoning their eight-month-old babies for a whole weekend. Yet the thought of escaping, and having forty-eight hours in one of her favourite cities with her best friends makes her feel dizzy with yearning. Sadie is picturing herself dressed up, in a dimly-lit bar, perhaps having had her eyebrows threaded. Would a proper mother hanker for such things, in between reading picture books and freezing bananas? No, she would not.

Sadie has yet to respond to Hannah’s mail, or mention it to Barney, even though it popped into her inbox in the early hours of this morning, and it’s now 1.30 pm. She should reply now, get it over with – like ripping off a plaster.
Sorry, Han, you know I’d love to come, but it’s just too difficult.
Yet she can’t make herself do it. Becoming a mother has made Sadie, who once taught art and design at a challenging north London secondary school, virtually incapable of making even the smallest decision.

Of course, Barney will say she should go, Sadie reflects as she tries to scrub an orange blot out of a towelling bib. You could hardly find a more decent, caring man than her husband, who’s currently tapping away on his laptop at the kitchen table, tweaking his little beard occasionally and rubbing his green eyes. Even the subject of his document reveals his innate goodness: a proposal to raise funds to build a girls’ school in Ghana for the charity he works for.

‘Still going to your mum and dad’s later?’ she asks.

‘Yeah,’ he murmurs, taking a swig from his mug. ‘I just need to finish this.’

‘Sure you don’t mind me not coming?’

There’s a quick burst of typing. ‘No, it’s fine.’ Tap-tap-tap. ‘You need a break.’ Tap-tap.

Sadie bends to kiss the back of his light brown neck. ‘I don’t want your mum and dad to think I’m being rude,’ she adds. It’s true, but while her in-laws are lovely – welcoming and non-judgmental – the prospect of an entire afternoon to herself is even lovelier. And it doesn’t feel right to tell Barney about Sadie’s hen weekend now. To be awarded a few hours off duty, then to demand an entire weekend away would be greedy beyond belief.

Barney sets off with the babies, taking jar food and two bottles of formula, which makes Sadie feel even guiltier (she’s trying to keep formula consumption down to a minimum, as a Proper Mother would). Now, all by herself in their small, dark house, she wonders how to fill the baby-free hours ahead. She could leaf through the newspapers, stimulating her mind – these days her reading is pretty much limited to
Peepo!
and
My Little Farm
, which doesn’t even have proper sentences. However, there are at least three weeks’ worth of papers in an ungainly pile by the sofa, and she doesn’t fancy sifting through them to find the most recent. She could sneak off to bed – no, too lazy – or flop out on the sofa in an exhausted stupor (ditto). For one wild moment she considers mashing up an overripe avocado to smear all over her face. There are several avocados in the kitchen – she’d bought them to feed the babies, who’d decided they tasted worse than ear wax. Wasn’t that what busy mums were supposed to do? Indulge in a little ‘pampering’? But Sadie has already wasted fifteen minutes of her precious afternoon and doesn’t want to be pampered. No, she needs to get
out
.

But where to? Barney has driven to his parents’ place, so she’s temporarily carless, and although Little Hissingham is charmingly pretty with its village green and whitewashed pub, there isn’t a hell of a lot going on. Everyone raves about the pub, the Black Swan, but Sadie isn’t sure she’d feel entirely comfortable wandering in on her own. She’d be bound to spot someone she knows, however vaguely: that woman from the park, who’d want to know if she’d found her babies’ shoes yet, or Monica whose baby’s party she hurried out of far too eagerly. Plus, drinking in the daytime, all alone, she’d probably be marked as an alcoholic.